New contractual requirements came into force from the 1^st April 2014 requiring that GP practices should make available a statement of intent in relation to the following IT developments:

• Summary care record (SCR)
• GP to GP care record transfers
• Patient online access to their GP record
• Data for commissioning and other secondary care purposes

Summary Care Record (SCR)

NHS England requires practices to enable successful automated uploads of any changes to patients summary information, at least on a daily basis, to the summary record. Having your summary care record available will help anyone treating you without your full medical record. They will have access to information about any medication you may be taking or any drugs that you have a recorded allergy or sensitivity to.

GP to GP Record Transfers

NHS England require practices to utilise the GP2GP facility for the transfer of patient records between practices, when a patient registers or de-registers (not for temporary registration).

It is very important that you are registered with a doctor at all times. If you leave our GP and register with a new G. your medical records will be removed from your previous doctor and forwarded on to your new GP via NHS England, it can take paper records up to two weeks to reach your new surgery.

With GP to GP record transfers your electronic record is transferred to your new practice much sooner.

The Chapel Medical Centre confirms that GP to GP transfers are already active and we send and receive patient records via this system.

Patient Online Access to Their GP Record

NHS England require practices to promote and offer the facility to enable patients online access to appointments, prescriptions, allergies and adverse reactions.

The Chapel Medical Centre has the facility to book and cancel appointments, order repeat prescriptions and view a summary of your medical records online. If you do not have a username and password for this system, please contact a member of reception staff.

Data for Commissioning and Other Secondary Care Purposes

It is already a requirement of the Health and Social Care Act that practices must meet the reasonable data requirements of commissioners and other health and social care organisations through appropriate and safe data sharing for secondary uses, as specified in the technical specification for care data.

The Chapel Medical Centre has specific arrangements in place to allow patients to opt out of care data which allows for the removal of data from the practice. Please contact reception if you wish to opt out of this data sharing. We also confirm that we undertake annual training and audits to ensure that all our data is handles correctly and safely via the Information Governance Toolkit.

For more information on patient data visit: https://www.nhs.uk/your-nhs-data-matters/